Summary

this article talks about how higher ed is important but how the cost is outrageous and how student loans are around forever. it also includes things that are coming up in congress that will make schools fill out a form to show how much student loan applicants will be paying per month once they begin to start paying. but something like this is had when there are more than 4000 colleges and universities. the article argues that this information should be there and should have always been there because young adults should get the easiest to compare charts before they make a huge life changing decision. Gale believes that congress will take up this proposal next year after online gambling is solved because that's more important to congress.

Ethos

•    Gail Collins
•         The Times Andrew Martin
•          Pat Callan of the Higher Education Policy Institute

Pathos

• ·         Shouldn’t there be more of a match between cost of college and potential earning powerof the graduates
• ·         People don’t believe much any more about the altruistic motives of colleges and universities
• ·         The good news is that controlling college costs really does seem to be an administrative priority. The bad news is that there are more than 4000 colleges and universities

Logos

• ·         Department of Education is paying more than $1.4 Billion per annum to folks whose job is to collect on $76 billion in defaulted student loans.
•      "eight hundred dollars a month until you're 51 years old!"
• 
  

Article

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/opinion/collins-the-lows-of-higher-ed.html?_r=1&ref=columnists

Visual analysis paragraph

The first thing to grab the attention of the audience is  an empty class room with the American flag in the shot then a person walking out an empty hallway in a school with lockers, so right from the beginning you can tell what this video is all about. The sound goes along with the shots and that helps drive home the point. As far as the shots being changed and altered there is not much of it except in the hallway shot, it uses depth of field which has the close lockers in focus and the doors to the hall way out of focus along with the person walking out of it. This could symbolize people walking out on education and it doesn’t have to be a specific person so that why it is blurry and depth of field is used. No text is used in this and I don’t think that any need to be used to deliver the point. This argues that president Barack Obama has done a good job with education as the girl says and how she had to take out loans because her family could not afford to send her to college with so many brothers and sisters. This gets most college students that have or either will be taking out loans to pay for school and if there is a lower interest rate on student loans then you will be able to pay it back faster and start making more money sooner helping the economy that is pathos. I don’t know if there is much ethos or logos in the commercial as not many facts are stated.

Progress for the people: Education video

Faigley, Lester, and Jack Selzer. Good Reasons: Researching and Writing Effective Arguments, MLA

Update. Needham Heights, Massachusetts: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. 

- What visual elements grab your attention first?

The empty class room and empty halls of a school.

- What other details reinforce that impression? How?

The music goes along to it. Seems like sad and you know how its about education

- What is more important? Less important?

I think everything is important

- What about color and style? What impact do they have on your impressions?

I don’t know if color really plays a roll in this commercial

- How does the image direct the viewer’s eyes and reinforce what is important?

I’m not sure that the commercial does this.

- What text is included? How does the text relate to the image? 

There is no text

- What argument is being made? Consider: when this was made (kairos), who is the

audience, what is the purpose (exigency). 

That education is important and that president Barack Obama has helped with students taking out loans at lower rates so there is not as much to pay back and they can start making money sooner.

- List details that provide ethos, pathos, logos.

Well huge pathos is that as a college student that is soon going to have to take out loans to pay for school it will be nice to have lower interest rates

Education

Plagiarism

The author of “Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age” (Aug 1, 2010) is Trip Gabriel, claims that now-a-days with the digital age that it becomes more easy to just copy and paste without even thinking that we are doing something wrong. First there was an instance where a student copy and pasted from a FAQ page and thought that he didn’t need to cite that source because it does not include the author information. There were other cases where coping and pasting off Wikipedia no citation was used because it is “common Knowledge” because it is written and edited by a collaboration of people. She had a few people saying on here that the citation rules should not be getting easier because it is destroying creativity. What I got from the article was that it really needs to be reinforced in middle and high school so that it just becomes natural to cite your source when you take it. This was helpful to look at and I bet it would be for people around this college and high school age so that they can think about it and hopefully make the change so they don’t get in trouble for not citing it properly. 

Occupy Art

In this picture what first catches the eye is the American flag layed over the V mask. I think this catches the eye mostly because it takes up pretty much the whole picture, and the fact that the color seems to really stand out. The color is vivid which just gives it that awesome look. The Costitution behinde the mask and American flag is I think critical to the power of this picture, a very small detail that some wouldn't even notice if they were just glancing at it. Obviously this has some pathos. if you have ever seen V for Vendetta you know "... ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love..." and it is the idea of occupy, the 99%. i don't know how much logos or ethos a piece of art really needs and i guess this one doesn't really have any.

Romney's video Analysis

In Romney’s video I found the first thing that caught my eye was the fire in the snow and fireworks above the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games. This was soon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. So the fact that Romney was able to make it happen was a big deal to people and the Olympics are a time when a nation really comes together so if that wouldn’t have happened it would have been devastating for the whole world. The sports that the video showed help to reinforce how much of a big deal it was. I feel like them putting so much emphasis on the “story book marriage” is not so important. And all of the things saying he was cheap might not have been the best thing. I don’t think that anything as far as color was changed I mean photos that were taken in black and white stayed that way and things that were in color were not changed to black and white, like in Obama’s video, I think it was just meant to be simple and sometime that is the best way to have it because it is easy to interpret it for what it is. The clips of Mitt’s father I think help a lot because it shows that he has been in politics from a young age. Just like most political videos it is being made to try to convince the American voters to vote for this person because of what this person can do for America. In Mitt Romney’s video they provide a lot of pathos with things such as, the Olympics and them having a “story book marriage.” Ethos for this video is that his father worked in politics and he knows how to get things done in hard times. 

Obama's video analysis

For Obama’s video, I found the thing that catches your eye first is all of the middle class houses that are shown. These images are shown because in his plan this is who he is trying to strengthen and who he is also trying to get votes from. Other things he shows are like public class rooms, some middle class workers, along with a GM assembly line. Those are all things that relate to the middle class. To be honest most everything is important and that is why it is shown in the video, I don’t think that something not relevant would be put in a video of this magnitude. Color is basic until about three quarters of the way through. At this point in the video it’s talking about killing Osama Bin Laden, the picture now goes to black and white. I think it was used well because it was like a dark time in remembering and such, but then it goes back to color and that’s like coming out of the darkness and moving forward with other problems. Obviously the argument being made here is that you should vote for President Barack Obama.  There are many things in this video that hit us emotionally like, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the stock market crash, and just everyday struggles. Ethos on this video is very straight forward, he is the president of the United States of America and he has experience doing this. He also has people speak that have very similar experience.

Response to Ann Romney's and Michelle Obama's speeches

First off both speeches were very well written and that is what you should expect from people in their position. Both of the speeches I though possibly lacked in ethos what I really got as far as ethos for both Michelle and Ann was that they have experience, but maybe people in their position that’s all they need to be credible. It’s not like these are two average Americans talking about what it take to run the county well. These lady’s husbands have been around the block a few times per say. So I believe that they themselves as moms and ladies in their position are credible enough. Both Michelle Obama and Ann Romney had a ton of pathos. I think in speeches like this that is the key. If you want voters I think you have to get them on an emotional level. Both of them said things like it is a great country and that they are average Americans just like us I think saying these things hit people on an emotional level because most everyone that is voting, and that is who they are trying to get with these speeches, loves America, also likes living here. Both of the women both talked about their husbands and how much they love them, as well they talked about how their husbands got to the position that they are in because of hard work, not taking the easy way and maybe doing things that we considered “too hard” because it was the right thing to do. What American doesn’t like that? Both women didn’t have too much logos. Ann Romney I know stated that Romney improved unemployment in Massachusetts. It was hard to watch both of these speeches without bias and to take it for what it is without thinking in the back of your mind “that’s total bullshit.” But I do think both of them did present their points very well.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 in "choices 2.0" has Joe Marshall Hardin suggest that to make a good piece of writing that one must have a proper structure, a thesis and then points to back the thesis up. Also he gives ideas on how to improve the 3 main components of a piece logos, pathos, and ethos. He claims that personal stories will help your ethos but not be the only thing, and how personal stories can also add to pathos because there is a lot of emotion in some personal stories. Joe is trying to inform us on how we can make our writing better in order to make us better writers and hopefully get better grades. 

Web means the end of forgetting response

First off I think it is extremely unlucky and I think not fair what happened to this lady in the article. I know if you were a teacher and you had students that could look you up real quick on Facebook, or something, maybe you should watch want you post and maybe those websites should have times where they postpone your post until you sober up and can think about what you are really posting. Though I do think that if you are in a profession where you should have a clean profile that it is up to you to not get so drunk ,or hangout with people who will tag you in posts without permission, that you put yourself in that position. That could be another feature that they could implement, fist sent you a request asking if with people who will tag you in posts without permission. That could be another feature that they could implement, fist sent you a request asking if you would really like to be tagged in a post, location, or photo. It should be ridiculous if you lose a job over what you have on your Facebook or MySpace because that is an old website that not many people use anymore, and we young when we had those and didn’t think that any of that would ever come back to us. Some of those services that the article was talking about was really cool, but it would be ridiculous to pay that much money a month so that you could have a somewhat clean profile, it’s not like satisfaction is guaranteed with that service so why spend the money in that case that it might help you. The Gmail is the coolest solution to the problem but I think you should be able to pick your times and what days that it enforces the math problem to send the email. If they were to change that it would be perfect in my mind I think. But from now on I’m going to think about what I post before I do so, so that one day down the road It won’t bite me in my butt.

Gaming a way of the future

I believe that Dr. Jane McGonigal creates a good argument for the idea that people should be spending a good amount of their life in online gaming. She first brings up a good point that she just finished up her doctorate in this study that makes he a very credible source. And I know from experience that TED doesn’t let something really crazy on to the show. Her credibility increases when she states she has been working with the Institute for the Future. She uses major studies done by other places such as Berkley. She does a great job of getting to the audiences emotion. She has you believing that you yourself can and will be able to solve the nations and even the world’s greatest problems. The idea that you can save the world from hunger, poverty, and the oil crisis. Now who doesn’t want to do that? She states that online gaming creates a strong social structure where people can collaborate, because great minds think alike why not try to get all of the greatest minds together to solve a world crisis. This can be done by gaming first off to create the great minds, and not just great minds but super empowered minds. If given a fake scenario in a game and told to fix the problem people will work for hours to fix that and when they do they feel empowered and ready to move on to the next problem. If in the real world you start with little achievable goals it is the same way these people through online games want to continue on to the next problem. In online games it really is a blissful productivity meaning you are being productive but you’re also happy doing it so you want to keep on doing it. 5.93 million years have been put into WoW (World of Warcraft) sense it came out. Imagine if that many years would have been put to a more practical game that would possible help solve the problems of the real world. Dr. Jane McGonigal make really good points and I agree with her mostly because I am a gamer myself and someone telling me that I need to play more is great to me.

Writers on writing

The article by Kent Haruf suggests that it is good to find your place and routine so that you are able to write well. He first states some other writers and what they do such as Maya Angelou would rent a hotel room and be in there for days. However Kent Haruf prefers to be in his basement using a typewriter and writing on yellow paper that you can’t even get anymore. Did I mention he does it all with a blindfold over his eyes so he can’t see. That way he can’t get distracted from the story and keep the creative juices flowing. In order to keep the main idea of the story the same when he is editing he often edits the piece and then never goes back to it. I think that he is writing for anyone that is writing anytime soon because he is to find your way to get the juices flowing and some were that you can work without interruption preferably.

Introduction

The introduction of this book talks about how anyone can be a good writer. That to be a good writer it is not a matter of talent but a matter of hard work and wanting to better yourself as a writer. The audience that the author is addressing is first to second year college students that are there first English class in college. The author makes himself credible by relating it to real world scenario like being in an office and having to send off an e-mail, you have to make sure it is well written so people believe you are a professional.